Quite the saddest thing I have read in a very long time was the obituary in today’s Guardian to the former footballer and manager Terry Yorath, who has died at the age of 75. I cannot say I was at first a huge admirer of Yorath the footballer, playing for Don Revie’s ruthless killing machine of the 1970s AKA Leeds United as he did, but I learned to appreciate that he could actually play. You don’t accumulate the number of career appearances Yorath did unless you can play. But it was not his long and in the main successful career in playing and later coaching that moved me: it was the personal trauma he endured.
I well remember hearing about the terrible news back in 1992 about the death of his son, Daniel, from undiagnosed hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. Worse still, Daniel died when playing football with his dad in the back garden. He was 15.
In 2017, Yorath was asked in a BBC Wales interview how he coped with the death of his son. “I didn’t, really,” he said. “I started drinking more. I would go up to his grave every night and do the things people say they do when they lose someone. I’d go into his room and smell his clothes.” In 2005, Yorath gave a raw and emotional interview to The Guardian, which you can read by clicking here. You can almost feel the pain.
What I didn’t know, or perhaps I had simply forgotten, was that Terry Yorath saw further tragedy at close hand during the fire at Bradford City, where he was a coach, in 1985, where 56 people died and at least 265 were injured. And he was a hero, saving lives by guiding people, including his own family, to safety. How sad that one man should ensure two such tragedies in his lifetime.
He was far from perfect, as he himself admitted, and he nearly killed a young girl running her over when he was three times the drink-drive limit, but we know he learned and became a better person. He also did vital work raising awareness of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, the biggest killer of children in this country.
And now he has died at the relatively young age, these days, at 75. No one should lose a child, no one should have to face a national disaster like the Bradford Fire, but that, I’m afraid, is the often grim reality of life.
My thoughts are with his family and friends. I hope too that he is able to rest in peace.
